Thanks to our members for being cooperative about the recent closures of our shared facilities (pools, courts and gym). This whole situation is very frustrating and not anything anyone wants. However, with the spike in infections we are experiencing, we all need to do what we can to stop the spread of the virus and take precautions. That is the best way to protect our community and get back to normal as soon as possible.
To give you some idea of the types of things the Board is looking at in trying to decide what is best to do, this week the US set a world record for the number of new cases in a single day – 63,247; medical system stress indicators such as delays in getting test results, lowered percentages of contact traces/new case, overwhelmed ICU capacity, increased ventilator use, etc. are reappearing. I know most of our members are trying to do the right thing with social distancing and face coverings, but we have had some serious issues in this regard and complaints from others who feel unsafe. Ensuring good behavior at our venues is extremely difficult for both staffing and financial reasons as well as the open nature of our court venues. Please know the Board is watching pandemic developments closely and hopes to be able to reopen certain of our shared facilities as soon as better trends are evidenced.
Caution and basing decisions on factual pandemic developments are the guiding principles for us about reopening. At this point, we are looking for sustained improvement in COVID-19 measurements as recommended by public health experts before reopening. We expect to move in stages, with courts probably being the first to reopen. If that goes well and the general COVID-19 “curves” continue to improve, we will then move on to pool reopening. The gym is the most problematic situation, and most likely will be the last to reopen. For obvious reasons, the gym reopening will be very structured at first and we doubt classes of any kind will resume in the near future.
In the meantime, we are working with our court maintenance people to use this down time for needed work that would require courts be closed to do. This includes restriping Court 1 for pickle ball and tweaking last year’s resurfacing as needed, especially at Court 2. Our goal is to have these courts ready for the high season this fall and winter when so many more members are here and anxious to use these facilities.
On the subject of expenses and dues refunds, we are looking at that closely. We actually do not have a great deal of “savings” because of closure – things like insurance, utilities, landscape, taxes, legal, pool and court maintenance, parking lot lease payments, etc. keep going on. We have some savings in staff and instructor expenses. Please remember, we are all the “owners” as well as the customers of these facilities. If we give refunds, we are paying them from our own money to ourselves. The main financial result from “closure savings” may be not having to raise dues (or raise dues as much) next year. Remember, minimum wage increases and general inflation are continuing. It may not be wise to pay the administrative costs to issue refunds and then have to raise dues as of January 2021.
Thanks for your help and cooperation in this difficult time.
Stay safe – we will get through this
Board of Directors
Indian Palms Country Club Association